It's a Lonely Melody When the Pitch Is Just Right
by kab16
Summary: Musical Challenge. Five song-based drabbles following the lives of everone on and off the island. "She does a lot of things that don't matter now so she won't have to think about him." post-finale.


_**A/N: **_Hello! So I tried another musical challenge. And I cheated. A lot. Here were the rules:

_Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.  
2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.  
3. Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!  
4. Do ten of these, then post them._

I'll start by saying that for my first one, I wrote it before choosing a song. Then for the rest of them I skipped songs until one came up that I liked. I took over the time frame of each song. And I only did five. So I guess the only rule that I actually followed was the 1st one.

My fandom is Lost (obviously) and it focuses on the lives of people after the plane leaves the island.

Also, a little slightly off topic note, the last time I did one of these, _**eyeon**_ said something about there not being any songs about lost.

http:/www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=CjAbEt_ODfw&feature=related

http:/www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=mlVQSD5vjKA&feature=related

These are both Ingrid Michaelson singing about Lost. They are really funny and good! I love her. Just replaces the (dot)s with "." to get there.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy =)

-Sarah

* * *

_**Be OK**_

_**Ingrid Michaelson**_

_I just wanna be okay today  
I just wanna feel today, feel today, feel today  
I just wanna feel something today  
I just wanna feel today, feel today, feel today  
I just wanna feel something today_

_Open me up and you will see_  
_I'm a gallery of broken hearts_  
_I'm beyond repair, let me be_  
_And give me back my broken parts_

She does the laundry. She sews a hole in his shirt. She cooks dinner. She puts food on her plate and throws out nearly as much at the end. She doesn't even make Charlie carry his own plate to the sink anymore, because doing it herself wastes another eight seconds and that's another eight seconds to think about something that didn't matter so she wouldn't have to think about him (As if that helped at all. As if she wasn't still thinking of him. Always.) She does a lot of things that don't matter now. If the police were useless, she was even more so.

She had spent three years tracking him. She had a crew and a tracking system and found him on some remote island that wasn't even on the map. But now? She couldn't do anything. She was numb. If it weren't for Charlie, she wouldn't even be getting up in the mornings.

She begins sending Charlie to bed an hour early so she could get to sleep right after. Another hour that she doesn't have to feel. Another hour wasted so that she her day of hurting is another hour shorter.

But some nights she did feel something. His arms around her, his lips on hers. The scent of his breath as he whispers against her lips that everything is okay. It makes the aching in her heart so much worse when she wakes up alone.

But she still always hopes that tonight will be one of those nights.

The pain it brings in the morning is worth it.

She's washing dishes by hand, because it takes more time than throwing them in the dishwasher, when she heard muffled voices up above. She freezes, the plate falling to the ground. _Charlie's up there._

She runs faster than ever, and is almost to the deck when she hears him.

"Daddy!"

_Daddy?_

She pulls the door open slowly and steps out. And there he is, crouched down, face buried in Charlie's hair.

He looks up when he hears her.

"Penny."

She's crying too hard to speak, so she just runs over and collapses into his arms.

Hurley watches the scene with a smile on his face. When the three head inside, Charlie on his father's shoulders and Penny and Desmond's hands intertwined, he makes his way back to the island. At least his new Jacob Powers could help make one thing right again.

That night, Penny leaves the unwashed dishes in the sink. And when she gets into bed, the things she feels don't cause any heartbreak in the morning.

_**Time Is All Around**_

_**Regina Spektor**_

_Time is all around  
Except inside my clock  
Everybody's waiting for their lover to unlock_

_Leaves become most beautiful when they're about to die_  
_When they're about to fall from trees_  
_When they're about to dry up_

_Time is all around_  
_Time is all around_

Time.

That was all he had. Time and time and time.

He used to think living forever would be the greatest thing in the world.

But what's so great about having forever when the rest of the world only has a few short years? All of his friends moved on. The ghosts stopped needing him. She never even came at all.

What does an island need a keeper for anyway? It's not like anyone's coming anymore.

He would never bring anyone here.

They only have so much time.

Time ceased to have meaning for him. There was day and there was night and there was day and there was night. The sun came up in the east and dropped in the west and then somehow found its way back and did it all again.

But he never changed. _Nothing _ever changed.

No one ever came.

No one needed him anymore.

He didn't have any purpose here at all. Maybe it was time they left. The island was safe now, wasn't it? Anyone who knew about it was dead and no one else was coming. That's all he was here for in the first place, right?

His job was done.

Ben went grey first. He followed shortly after. Within days his hair was completely transformed. He was too tired to stand and his bones always ached.

It was the best he's felt in ages.

_**Starting Now**_

_**Ingrid Michaelson **_

_I want to crawl back inside my mother's womb  
I want to shut out all the lights in this room  
I want to start fresh, like a baby in a sink  
Scrub away all these thoughts that I think of you_

_So life moves slowly when you're waiting for it to boil_  
_Feel like I watch from 6 feet under the soil_  
_Still want to hold you and kiss behind your ears_  
_But I recount the countless tears that I lost for you_

He was in the smell of her coffee. He was in the in the sheets on her bed and the park outside their house (her house. It was always _her_ house. But then again...it never really was). They used to sit in that park and watch Aaron play. Sometimes they'd take him for ice cream after.

He was in the ice cream parlor too.

He was everywhere.

And so it was that much harder to move on without him.

Claire tried to help. She moved into Kate and Aaron's house (but for her it was still their house) instead of taking Aaron away. Sawyer was there for her too, in his own, distant way.

"Do you ever...feel like he's still here?" Sawyer asked one day as they sat in their regular booth in the diner. She stared at him, watched as he intently stirred his soup. "Yeah," she finally said.

He nodded. He met her eyes for a second and then looked back down. "Me too."

They didn't say anything else.

She asked Claire how she did it once. She just shrugged. "It was different for me."

"What do you mean?"

"Charlie died, and then a group of killers came to the island. I didn't even have a full day to mourn. I was always moving. And then...well you know what came next. It's all about keeping busy. Or maybe that's not it. Maybe it's about dealing with life or death situations. I mean, look at Sawyer. I didn't even know he wasn't still with you until we got home" (home. How could this feel like home for her?) "When you have to plan out your every move to stay alive, you don't have much time to think of anything else. But now we're home," (again, the word made her shiver) "and, well, there isn't much to worry about, is there? I mean, my big concern of the day was weather I could drop Aaron off at school and still be on time for work." She laughed slightly, and Kate felt something in her heart tear. She didn't even get to worry about things like that.

She hated him. She hated that she met him and she hated that she moved in with him. She hated that this house had to be theirs, that he had to be wherever she was. She knows a little something about loss and she had thought she'd seen the worst of it. But this, this was indescribable. He was everywhere, but he wasn't anywhere. Everything was filled with his presence-she couldn't escape it even when she tried-but _he_-_Jack_-he wasn't here at all. He was on the island. Dead.

She had never believed that that island was hell. Not really. But he had. At one point, Jack was sure of it. It made he want to laugh. It made her want to cry. _That island was nothing like hell,_ she wanted to scream at him through her tears. _You have no idea what hell feels like. Try being here, _she wanted to challenge. _Trying being me here. Because being here without you... it's as close to hell as you can get. _

_**Carbon Monoxide**_

_**Regina Spektor**_

_Carbon monoxide  
Soon we'll go to sleep  
No one will notice we're gone  
Cause we don't have a job to keep  
They'll just say that we're being lazy  
Sex crazy, sex cra-zazy  
They'll just say we're living our whole life in bed  
And we'll be in bed but we'll be oh so very much  
Dead-a, dead-a, dead-a, dead-a, dead-a, dead-a  
Dead-a, dead-a, dead-a, dead-a, dead-a, d-dead_

They didn't think it was a mistake.

They were both numb and empty in the morning. She stayed through the night and put her clothes on robotically while he took a shower and made breakfast as if in auto-mode. They ate together at his small kitchen table. They didn't speak and they didn't look at each other. They didn't acknowledge the others existence at all.

She put her plate in the sink when she was done and let herself out.

But they didn't regret it.

She went home and he went to work. Miles and Claire asked identical questions.

"With Kate."

"I was with Sawyer."

No questions were asked. They both knew Miles and Claire wouldn't understand. But that was okay. Because they did.

They got together a couple of weeks later. She smiled when she saw him at their regular booth. He smiled back.

"Hey Freckles."

"Hey James."

They hugged and they talked and they ate and then she went back to her house and he went to his. They didn't act like anything had changed between them because nothing had.

In the moment that they had found themselves in his bed, not really sure who did what to get them there, she wasn't Kate and he wasn't James. They both knew it. And it was okay.

They didn't have to be.

_**Beautiful Day**_

_**U2**_

_It was a beautiful day  
Don't let it get away  
Beautiful day_

_Touch me, take me to that other place_  
_Reach me, I know I'm not a hopeless case_

_What you don't have you don't need it now_  
_What you don't know you can feel it somehow_  
_What you don't have you don't need it now_  
_Don't need it now_  
_Was a beautiful day._

There was light.

A deep, glimmering yellow that washed over everything. That shed light on all parts of them that they wanted to keep and washed away all of who they were and what they did in their past life that they would rather forget. If hope could be defined by color, this would be it.

It was beautiful.

Mesmerizing.

Penny leaned against Desmond. Charlie wrapped his arm around Claire and Aaron. Libby moved closer to Hurly. Jin took Sun's hand in his. Jack smiled at Kate. James squeezed Juliet's hand. They were going into the great unknown yet again. But something was different this time.

Fear.

There was no fear. Wonder. Curiosity. But no fear. Instead, there was a strange sense of safety that felt completely wrong and totally right all at once.

The light blinded them and everything disappeared.

The first thing James was aware of when he could feel again was Juliet's tight grasp on his hand.

The second was the sound of waves crashing against the sand.


End file.
